Asrock 939 Dual-SATA II - Is NCQ only available on the SATA II connector?

[RT]

I'm about to put together a system based on this board after reading many reviews and ploughing through the highly informative AT thread.

Is NCQ only available on the SATA II port? If so, are there any pitfalls in running an SATA/150 drive with NCQ (Seagate barracuda 7200.8 ST3250823AS) on the SATA II slot as the boot drive? This will be the only SATA drive in the machine.

Everything I've read about the board implies NCQ is only available on the SATA II slot, so just want to know if I'm likely to face any problems running an SATA/150 drive on it after reading the manual's warnings about running only SATA/150 devices on the M1567 SATA port and only SATA/300 devices on the JMB360 SATA II port

Thanks in advance

 

[grooge]

the only problem is that using a SATA2 devices on the SATA1 connector would likely cause problem if the user don't read the label on the drive and forget to change the jumper to SATA1 compatibility. Then, he'll blame the board, the drive, ... but never him...

 

[SynthDude2001]

I'm running that exact drive on the SATA II port of that exact motherboard, for just that reason (as far as I could tell, NCQ is only available on that port). No problems at all.

 

[RT]

SynthDude2001, that's great to hear Now I just have the long wait till monday morning, when the final bits - my X2 3800+ and hard drive - are delivered and I can start putting it all together *looks at clock* - Doesn't help knowing they've been sat in a depot only a couple of miles away since last night - The joys of couriers who won't let you pick up before the "delivery due" date, eh?

Cheers fellas

 

[Spatulator]

There is no need for NCQ in a single user environment. I leave NCQ disabled on my sata II drive because all it does is create more cpu work load with no increase in performance. If I was running a file server or webserver, I would enable NCQ. I would still try to use the jmicron port because its a newer sata port it might yeild slight performance benefits over the onboard controller. I just posted about my experience setting up a drive on the jmicron in the big huge asrock/uli 1695 thread, it wasnt exactly a smooth process so you might want to check that out